


We Are Nowhere and It's Now

by visiblemarket



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Angst, M/M, business as usual in m-sur-m, javert being a dick, m. madeleine being nice but shifty, vaguely implied sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-15 22:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/visiblemarket/pseuds/visiblemarket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>For the Valvert Gift Exchange: 52: javert and madeleine are in an established relationship, and javert can’t complain, despite the mayor’s annoying habit of constantly reassuring the inspector that no matter what he’ll always love him and to always remember that, like, at least 4 times a day.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Nowhere and It's Now

Madeleine asleep was not so different from Madeleine awake. Softer, perhaps, not that the man was particularly hard; he seemed more or less at peace. Slight furrowed brow, hints of his calm, gentle smile playing at the corners of his lips. Lips that were, it must be said, redder than Javert had ever seen them. It was strange to think he was the culprit.

His own lips were still warm, and his mouth, as he watched Madeleine sleep, was dry. He could not say why. Could not even say why he was watching the man sleep, beyond the fact that he had grown used to watching him and could think of no reason to stop just because the man was not awake to catch him at it.

Madeleine stirred. A soft, short sound, almost like a whimper escaped his lips, and when his eyes opened, he wore the expression of a man startled to discover intense scrutiny but determined not to show displeasure at it. Javert was not unfamiliar with it.

He cleared his throat. Madeleine sighed, and glanced at him through dark eyelashes.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

"You aren't sleeping."

"No." Madeleine raised his eyebrows and Javert sighed. "I do not sleep often."

Madeleine rolled to his side, propped himself up on an elbow. “But at least once a night, I’d hope?”

He thought Madeleine might be teasing him. There was a strange brightness in his eyes, at least, perhaps merely reflected light from the full moon, stark the bedroom’s darkness. He wasn’t sure.

“Sometimes.”

Madeleine smiled, slight but obvious, even in poor light. “No one would doubt your commitment to the law if you indulged in a full night’s sleep, Inspector.”

“It isn’t by choice,” he said. It came too quick, and too sharp, and Madeleine seemed to want to respond with characteristic kindness: the glint in his eyes had softened, and his smile had faded, freeing his mouth to impart something bland and patronizing. Javert let himself fall back against the mattress and closed his eyes, hoping to avoid the words.

None came. He waited.

Two breaths later, a hand pressed lightly at chest. He inhaled again, and the exhale was stolen by a kiss, soft and unhurried. He opened his mouth to the intrusion and turned his head to meet it properly. Madeleine shifted, the solid, inescapable warmth of his body coming to cover his own, his legs straddling Javert’s waist.

He ran a curious hand over Madeleine’s broad back. Found the cloth of his shirt to be almost as warm as skin but rough to the touch. Madeleine bore this as he had before, silently and for a scant few seconds before he grabbed Javert’s wrists and pinned them above Javert’s head with one large, careful hand. Javert squirmed but his grip was too tight, as unyielding as iron. Javert’s heart quickened at the thought, and any thought at all became impossible.

*

“You need not stay, Javert.” He glanced over; Madeleine was not smiling, and his chest was still rising and falling at a sharp, unstable rhythm. His voice seemed rather calm in spite of that, as if he’d forced it into compliance. “Not if you’d prefer your own bed.”

“I would not,” he said. It was too late to be seen leaving the Mayor’s house, anyway. He thought he saw the corner of his lip twitch, and turned his head away.

Later (perhaps minutes, perhaps only seconds), he felt Madeleine’s fingers brush against the side of his hand. It was perhaps an accidental touch, light and without expectation, easily ignored. And yet he soon found himself running his thumb along Madeleine’s palm. The skin was rough, but the lines across it were easily followed. He could tell, without knowing how, that Madeleine was smiling at him again.

“Yes?”

“It’s nothing.” Madeleine’s tone was warm and heavy, like the afternoon sun. The thought startled him, and he tensed when Madeleine squeezed his hand. “It’s just…you are not entirely what I expected."

"I’m sorry to have disappointed,” he said, half in jest. There was a long silence. He opened his eyes; Madeleine’s expression was sheepish, but not unkind.

"I didn’t mean—" Madeleine grasped his hand, and brought it to his lips. Pressed a kiss to Javert’s knuckles, and then let their joined hands drop between their bodies again. "I’m glad to have been—" He shut his eyes, sighed, and then opened them again, only to use them to stare at the ceiling. “I would not have—“ he tried to gesture between them, but his hand was still curled around Javert’s. “I’m glad to have been wrong.”

It was not a sentiment with which Javert was familiar and he didn’t know how to respond. He settled on, “I see.” His uncertainty seemed to amuse Madeleine, if the softness in his eyes was anything to judge by. The man leaned close again, and pressed his forehead against Javert’s temple.

“I love you,” he said, the words hot against Javert’s ear. “I would not have taken you into my bed if I didn’t. Do you believe me?”

Javert turned his head to be able to see him properly, only to find that it put their faces too close to see anything but Madeleine’s eyes with any clarity.

“Yes,” he said, having no reason not to.

*

He left before dawn.

The streets were still dark and empty, and the breeze from the sea brought with it a deep chill as well as the scent of salt. He half-wished he’d stayed where he was, and scolded himself for it.

*

A week passed with only official, if perhaps more frequent, meetings with the Mayor. Inspector Javert remained, as ever, diligent. No one seemed to notice that the scowl on his face when he left the man’s office was slightly harsher than it had previously been, as if the result of overcompensation.

It rained, and the Mayor helped him on with the coat he had insisted Javert remove when he’d arrived. 

Madeleine leaned close, on the pretext of adjusting his collar. “I love you,” he murmured, expression unchanged except for a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, as if he were about to smile.

“Oh,” Javert heard himself say, more weakly than he would have liked. “Still?”

Madeleine did smile then, and tugged lightly at his collar again, drawing him closer. Pressed their foreheads together. “Yes. Still.” 

“Well,” Javert said, regaining some of his bluster. “All right, then.” 

He pulled himself away, and Madeleine let him go.

“Stay warm,” the man called after him, and Javert nodded, though it was unlikely the Mayor would have seen it.

*

The Mayor invited him to dinner, and Javert was too weak to refuse.

The food was hot, but he barely tasted it. After, the Mayor’s hand on his shoulder set him shivering, and even the warmth of Madeleine’s palm on his forehead didn’t calm him. 

“You are ill, Javert.”

“Apparently,” he mumbled, and Madeleine had the temerity to frown at him as if it was his fault. He would have complained, but he found himself bundled up the stairs and to the Mayor’s quarters before he had a chance to. 

He woke slowly, to candlelight, and was abruptly aware of the arm curled across his waist and the unusual warmth pressed to his side. He glanced toward the apparent source: Madeleine’s eyes were closed, but that was meaningless. 

He cleared his throat; the man’s eyes opened. They were soft, but not with sleep. 

“So you do sleep,” Madeleine said, quiet but not quite whispering.

“I never denied it.” 

“No,” Madeleine murmured, and pressed closer to Javert’s side. “I suppose you didn’t. How are you feeling?”

“Well enough to leave.”

“You don’t need to,” he said, stifling a yawn against Javert’s shoulder.

Javert smirked. “Of course not.” He raised his head, and leaned close enough to drop a light kiss at the corner of Madeleine’s mouth. Madeleine’s lips parted and returned the kiss, but he pulled back quickly. 

“You don’t need to,” he repeated, tone emphatic but strangely precise, and it took Javert a moment to glean their new meaning.

“Ah,” he said, and Madeleine sighed. 

“I meant only that you should rest. Here, if you wish.”

“Oh, that is all?”

“Javert.” It was far from the first time the man had said his name, but his tone was not one he’d heard before. Fond exasperation and strange familiarity. He wasn’t sure if he appreciated it. He shut his eyes rather than think about it, and felt Madeleine settle against him again. 

“I do love you.” 

The words were almost too loud in the darkness, but with his eyes closed, Javert found himself able to ask, “Why?”

The silence lasted a beat too long, and Javert opened his eyes. Madeleine’s expression was odd, sharp with an uncertainty he’d never noticed before, and then he seemed to catch himself and gave Javert a careful smile. “You are very brave, and kind in your way, and a much better man than you think.”

It seemed unkind to laugh at the sentiment, and he managed to contain it. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, though, and Madeleine seemed to take it as thanks. He smiled back, and kissed Javert’s cheek.

*

Days passed quickly. A routine began to form. Mornings on patrol, afternoons reporting to the Mayor, nights in a strange almost-courtship, a growing comfort built on regular declarations of love and brief assignations in Madeleine’s bed.

Assignations which were, in their way, almost painfully chaste. Mostly long, sweet kisses, an occasional quick release borne of friction and proximity and, just once, Madeleine's mouth, warm and slick against his skin.

He had yet to return the favor. 

The possibility made him flush. The Mayor must have noticed, because he rose from behind his desk and came to stand beside him. Their arms brushed, and Madeleine leaned down, his eyes apparently on the papers before him. Papers which had already been there when Javert arrived, but he imagined that from the factory floor it might seem as though the Mayor was inspecting one of the reports the Inspector sometimes brought. 

“What are you thinking of?” Madeleine said, low and fond. 

A month before, Javert would have frowned, shaken his head, and taken his leave, perhaps mumbling a perfunctory _nothing of importance_ in his wake.

Instead, he half-smiled. “Reciprocity.”

Madeleine gazed at him from the corner of his eye. Javert saw his hand move slightly from where it’d been braced on the dark wood of his desk, till his fingers half covered Javert’s own. 

“Oh?” he said, turning his head slightly. His eyes were very bright, and Javert met them carefully.

“I don’t enjoy owing favors.”

Madeleine chuckled and ducked his head again. “Of course you don’t,” he said. Stroked his fingers over the back of Javert’s hand, then pulled away with a sigh and walked back to the opposite side of his desk. “Dine with me tonight, Inspector.” 

“If you insist, Monsieur le Maire,” he said automatically. A month before he would have protested; two weeks, he would have hesitated. That day, he smirked, and left the office with his hat under his arm.

*

“What do you dream of?”

Madeleine had Javert’s head in his lap, and was running careful fingers through his hair. It was not a position he would have chosen, but it was not unpleasant. 

“I rarely recall. Why?”

“They seem to trouble you.” 

“There are worse burdens to bear.”

“Yes.” Madeleine stroked lightly at his cheek. That was not unpleasant either. “I suppose there are.”

*

It began to snow regularly.

Javert, though not particularly inclined to introspection, sometimes found himself thoughtful on mornings after a fresh coat had fallen over the town and muted the already-quiet sounds of dawn. 

He thought about the Mayor, sometimes, and of Madeleine often. 

The Mayor, he sometimes thought, was a good man. He’d brought the sort of stability borne of prosperity to Montreuil-sur-Mer, provided for its citizens as if he was their own (slightly indulgent) father, and was generally beyond reproach. That he had once doubted the man he never denied: it was a hard-learned lesson, that he could be mistaken, and he was determined to remember it. 

Madeleine was a fool. He was too kind, too soft, too quick to love, too easily taken advantage of. Javert was shocked to find that Madeleine’s vulnerability didn’t disgust him, but instead aroused surges of protective feeling toward the man, and at the worst times.

He heard that the Mayor had begun to take nightly walks around the town and by the docks, seeking out beggars and other unfortunates to clothe and feed and get robbed by. 

And so Javert, who was fond of routines and loathe to change them, began night patrols.

*

Javert’s office was smaller than the Mayor’s, but had sturdier walls and a solid door which was, at that moment, shut. This was unusual; Inspector Javert kept it open whenever he was there, on the principle that only the guilty had something to hide.

But the Mayor had shut the door carefully when he arrived from the hospital, still practically humming with frustration, and Javert had refused to rise, even to open it. 

“You're angry,” the Mayor said, overly familiar, as he paced before Inspector Javert’s desk.

“You acted beyond your authority.” This was not entirely true but neither was it entirely a lie. 

“She was dying.”

“Better she die in a jail than on the streets.”

“Better she live.”

“Yes, free and clear, after assaulting a man of good standing.”

“She claims she was provoked.”

“And a woman like that would never lie.”

“You _are_ angry. You are _offended_ that I tried to help a dying woman—“ Javert scoffed, and saw a flash of realization alight in the Mayor’s eyes as they met his, briefly, then darted away. “You’re not—You shouldn't be.” The Mayor continued his pacing, pausing only to glance at him once again. “You know I love you, and no other.”

 _I know you think it needs repeating_ , he thought. 

_That is entirely irrelevant_ , he meant to say.

“That is not the comfort you think it is,” was what came out, brittle and colder than he’d wanted. 

It stopped the pacing, at least. The Mayor’s green eyes flooded with familiar sympathy and for a moment, brief and sharp as it was, Javert thought it was for him.

“She is very ill, Javert,” he said, softly, pleadingly. Javert gave in to the urge to fold his arms across his chest, and snorted.

“Ill used, perhaps.”

The Mayor’s eyes narrowed, Javert tensed, thinking he was about to be struck. But it’s Madeleine who shrank back as if slapped, and turned away. His hand gripped the edge of Javert’s desk with enough strength to turn his knuckles white.

“I would ask that you take your leave, Inspector.”

“I—“

“You are dismissed, Javert.”

Javert blinked. The words of protest that swelled in his throat were quickly swallowed, and he nodded sharply at the Mayor’s back. “Monsieur le Maire,” he said, by way of acknowledgement, and retreated.

He shut the door with perhaps more force than strictly necessary, and walked out into the night without his hat or coat. Snow had begun to fall again. He didn’t notice it.

*

_I love you_ , he’d said, straightening the collar of Javert’s uniform with familiar ease.

 _I love you_ , breathed across the back of Javert’s neck, groaned into his mouth. Gasped as his hands ran fervently through Javert’s hair. Mouthed as Javert turned to look back at him from the bottom of the factory steps, and punctuated with a smile. 

He’d never returned the sentiment, but he’d never doubted its sincerity. He’d trusted instead, so infatuated that he’d turned a blind eye to the obvious: the strength of the man and his shadowy past, the half-remembered resemblance. 

Monsieur Madeleine was no fool, though Inspector Javert quite obviously was. 

Well. That would end now.

*

Monsieur Madeleine seemed troubled. His eyes darted between Javert and the door and his own hands, and he took a step back when Javert opened his mouth. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t understand this man at all, and he didn’t appreciate his presence, and he appreciated his absence even less, which was really the worst of it.

He shouldn’t have let him in. But he hadn’t thought of a reason to refuse him, and—he had seemed troubled. A part of him hoped the Mayor had accepted his resignation after all, but Javert knew he hadn’t. Madeleine was too proud of his ability to forgive to consider it. 

“I’m sorry to have come to you at home, Inspector.” Javert shrugged, and regretted it the moment he did. Madeleine’s eyes focused on him and stared. “You’re out of your uniform. I don’t. I don’t think I’ve—“

“You have,” he said, too quickly, and turned around in an effort to hide his frustration. “Was there something else you wanted?”

“No, I just—“ He should have seen it coming. He heard it; Madeleine moved slowly, and he had time to turn back around, more than enough time to stop him. But Madeleine wrapped his arms around him, and sighed against neck. “I came to apologize.”

“You have not wronged _me_ , Monsieur.” He made a half-hearted effort to pull away, but Madeleine’s arm tightened around his waist and drew him back.

“But I have. I have undermined you, and I have been unkind, and I have—“ there was a strange, soft sound behind him, and Madeleine took a heavy breath. “I have treated you very badly. And you were angry with me—“

“You have not—“

“Javert.” And it was with the tone, slightly scolding, somewhat fond, with an undercurrent of something else. “You _were_ angry with me. And you will—you will be again. But you must know. How much I loved you. You must remember that, all right? Always.”

“ _Loved_ me?” he said, half turning. Madeleine let him, but remained close, his chest warm against Javert’s, his hand light on Javert’s hip. 

“Love you. Do you promise?” 

It was jarring to be that close to him again, feeling him breath, seeing the quick flickers of emotion in his eyes; he felt the pull of his body heat, the temptation to be dragged under by it.

“Yes, yes, all right,” he said, pulling away before he was lost. 

Madeleine did not smile, which was a surprise. He continued to stare, then reached out, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and kissed him. Once, very quickly, too quickly for reciprocation, in fact, and retreated once again. 

“I will see you,” he said, and his eyes resumed their frenzied darting of before. “Tomorrow afternoon. All right?”

“Yes,” Javert said. “As always.”

Madeleine nodded briskly, and left, with one last look at him, and one last effort at a smile. 

No, Javert thought. That was not a man he would ever understand.

*

He went to sleep that night, and did not dream.

The next day, he woke up.


End file.
